This invention relates generally to vehicle seat adjusters and more specifically to vehicle manual seat adjusters which are adjustable fore and aft and which include a latching mechanism for maintaining a seat in a desired adjusted position.
Manual seat adjusters for a vehicle are well known in the art. A typical manually adjusted seat assembly will have two generally parallel seat adjusters each comprising a lower channel, sometimes referred to as a floor channel, connected to the vehicle. An upper channel with a seat attached is slidably carried by the lower channel and the lower channel and the upper channel are interconnected to prevent separation of the channels. Some form of latching mechanism is usually included to selectively adjust the position of the upper channel relative to the lower channel and thereby selectively position the seat relative to the vehicle.
A typical manual seat adjuster is designed to normally withstand the vertically directed loads placed upon it by an occupant of the seat. But when a seat belt is attached to the seat adjuster, a sudden deceleration can cause the seat adjuster to experience a larger than normal force in a horizontal direction. Nonetheless, it is desirable to attach a seat belt to the seat adjuster so that when the position of the seat is adjusted the seat belt will still be comfortable and secure and will not have to be readjusted. As a result, if a seat belt is attached to the manual seat adjuster, the seat adjuster must be able to withstand the greater than normal horizontal and vertical loads placed upon it by the seat belt during the sudden deceleration situations.
It is also desirable to have a manual seat adjuster which requires as little space and weight as possible to operate. Size and weight requirements are very important to automobile manufacturers in the present times. The smaller and lighter one can make a component of an automobile while still providing as good, or even improved, strength characteristics, the better. Therefor, a system to increase the strength of the manual seat adjuster without adding to the space required by the manual seat adjuster is needed.